Russia under the Old regime

51

sources in the absence of the whole tradition of contract, implanted in western Europe by vassalage.

Noteworthy also was the ignorance in Russia of subinfeudation. Boyars engaged themselves to serve princes only; and although well-to-do boyars sometimes had their own retainers, there were no complex ties of fealty linking prince, boyar and boyar's retainer, and therefore no network of mutual dependence so characteristic of western feudalism and so important for the political development of the west. The material side of western feudalism was the fief, that is property, either land or office, provisionally given to the vassal as reward for service. While modern scholars no longer adhere to the view that nearly all land in feudal Europe was held conditionally, no one questions that the fief was then the dominant form of land tenure. Property given servitors conditionally is known elsewhere; but the combination of the fief with vassalage is unique to western Europe.

Until recently it was widely believed that some kind of conditional land tenure had been known in appanage Russia at least since the 1330s, when Ivan 1 Kalita, the Great Prince of Moscow, had inserted in his testament a passage which seemed to allude to it. But the great authority on medieval landholding in Russia, S.B. Veselovskii, has shown that this belief rested on a misreading of the texts, and that, in fact, the first Russian fiefs (pomest'ia) were introduced only in the 1470s in conquered Novgorod.10 Until then, alod (votchina), which did not require service, was the only form of land tenure known in Russia. The absence in appanage Russia of any formal link between the ownership of land and the rendering of service signifies the absence of a fundamental feature of feudalism as practised in the west. Conditional land tenure, when it came to Russia in the 1470s, was not a feudal but an anti-feudal institution, introduced by the absolute monarchy for the purpose of destroying the class of 'feudal' princes and boyars (see below, Chapter 3). 'When [freemen in Russia] were vassals, they did not as yet receive compensation from the sovereign, or, at any rate, they did not have fiefs-terre, i.e. they lived, for the major part, on their alodial properties (votchiny)', writes Peter Struve, 'And when they began to receive fiefs-terre in the form of pomest'ia, they ceased to be vassals, i.e. contractual servants.'11

Appanage Russia did have an institution corresponding to fief-office in the so-called kormleniia, as provincial administrative posts were known. Appointments of this sort, however, were always made for limited periods (two years at the most), and they were not allowed to become the hereditary property of their holders, as was often the case